Mass Combat
Sometime we have too many combatants combating at once, so instead of rolling buckets of dice, here's a fast way to figure out what happens. Combatants into Stats First things first, instead of each ship being a sort of living breathing entity, we instead boil off their autonomy and make them no different than a piece of equipment. (Eg. Saurothrop Battleship +3) Each ship (or person, if personal combat) becomes one unit in the whole. Then, an armada can simply be shown as points. (Eg. 15 battleships at +3 is 75 points.) Once done, you should be able to describe both sides simple numbers. (RD clan at 75, SP clan at 85) Making the stats This can be done via Stat & Weight. The Header descriptions can be found in the Equipment section. The long and boring part is taking each one of these stats, and assigning a weight to it. (mDam +1 is more important then iPort +1; Therefore mDam +1 should receive a higher weight.) Once weighted, all the stat are multiplied by their weights, then summed. This summation is your starships point value. I used 75 above, but your ship will probably be in the hundreds. Personal call and house rules, if you have RD = 15,913 and SP = 13,498 you can get away with saying RD = 159 and SP = 135. Just keep it consistent. Simple tool that does the math for you. This tool will do the combat dice rolling as described below. Insert each Parties point value, then click "Run1", and each value will be altered to reflect the round/scene. This tool will also allow you to insert statistics for various starships so that you get their rating. For the example above, the Saurothrop Battleship was 26 points. Stats into Scenes into Stats into Resolution Now we have the part your players care about. They literally do not care about anything before this. "Oh lawdy an armada of one hundred thousand Saurothrop battlecruisers with twenty two thou...." it's fluff, not game. RD = 15,913 and SP = 13,498, close, but still not there. Make 4 scenes. 4 is last. Be prepared for that. Like this: # Opening Salvo. ## RD and SP clash. In a perfect world, you'd roll 15,913 and 13,498 d12s and count successes but that's dumb. ## If you can "!roll 159d12" and "!roll 135d12", that would be better. ### Then simply deduct each factions success from the others pool. ### See tool above. # Players do something important. ## This is where the Players get to run a quick scene to try and turn the tide of battle. (PS the bad guys should have mild advantage at start) ### A fan favorite is "duck and weave across the battle to attack some High Value Target." ### This would be Pilot checks, Observation checks, Cloak checks. ### Lot's of minor choices. "Big battle over there, no one care about you, and you'll get booped on accident -or- aux and lighter craft over there and they'll probably spot you." ## If the Players succeed, their faction should gain a relatively good but not crazy amount of points. I'd say 25% is badass. ## If the Players loses, maybe nothing happens. Maybe they accidentally fuck up their allies and lose points. Given the example I wouldn't go past 10% or 15%. ## Roll RD vs SP again, deducting their newest stats # Players do something more important. ## Just like the last time, only more. Players run a scene. ### Attacking the HVT. ### Boarding the HVT. ### Retrieving the MacGuffin from the HVTs wreckage and hauling ass back across the battle. ## It's still got to matter, and it has to be harder. Not by much though. And if they roll well, they might perceive it as easier. ## Win/Lose, same spread ; 25%/10% ... maybe mild increase to 30%/15% ## Roll again. They should have decimated each other by about 2/3rds statistically speaking. ### If not, sneak in an extra roll or two. We don't want heavy drift away from the players actions though. # Players save the day. ## Last scene, and now the battle should have an obvious winner. ### If Players winning, go for the gold, go for the throat, plead for showing mercy... or whatever. The Players action here, good or bad, ends the encounter, good or bad. ### If Players are losing, this might be runaway and booping ships blocking us, or just try to get out, allies be damned. ### The Players end the encounter. The encounter ends. So whatever's happening, gotta short-scene to wrap it up. ## Whatever the players do, give them the dice bonus. Might even go like 40%/30% instead of 25%/10%. This should be swinging the battle pretty far by now. ## Give RD and SP one final roll. This should be the nail in the coffin. We don't need zero (it's nice though). If we have 50 vs 5, we're done. Whatever the stats say, resolve with words and resume normal play.